AWS Professional Services collaborates with NOAA and GAMA-1 Technologies to expand NESDIS Common Cloud Framework capabilities

AWS Professional Services has partnered with the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), alongside GAMA-1 Technologies to broaden the scope and capabilities of the NESDIS Common Cloud Framework (NCCF). This work supports NOAA’s ability to ingest, manage, process, and disseminate critical environmental data.

NESDIS Common Cloud Framework: A comprehensive cloud-based solution

Launched in 2020, the NESDIS Common Cloud Framework (NCCF) provides NOAA with a secure, scalable, and cost-efficient cloud-based infrastructure. NCCF includes a robust suite of integrated services designed to streamline NOAA’s ground system operations, encompassing the Secure Ingest Service, Open Information Stewardship Service (OISS), Product Generation Service, and Dissemination Service. NCCF leverages Amazon serverless tools such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon EventBridge, AWS Step Functions, AWS Lambda, and more to disseminate data to the broader community.

NCCF Secure Ingest Service: Gateway for reliable data processing

The NCCF Secure Ingest Service acts as the primary entry point for environmental data, securely accepting satellite and observational data from NOAA, foreign, and commercial partners. This service conducts rigorous security checks, metadata extraction, and validation—so that all ingested data is reliable and ready for downstream processing. The Secure Ingest Service leverages event-driven architectures and tools such as EventBridge, Amazon Simple Queue Service, and Lambda to deliver data to downstream enterprise services.

NCCF Stewardship Service: Enabling data integrity and accessibility

Central to NOAA’s data management strategy, Open Information Stewardship Service (OISS) is a knowledge graph process framework employing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles and Open Data Standards. Utilizing a knowledge mesh and event-driven architectures with Amazon S3, EventBridge, Amazon Neptune, Lambda, and Step Functions, OISS integrates and manages comprehensive metadata and entity relationships. It supports dynamic data integration, version control, and provenance tracking, which enhances data integrity for scientific research and operational decision-making.

NCCF Product Generation Service: Advanced data processing and product generation

The NCCF Product Generation Service automates the execution of complex scientific algorithms, transforming raw satellite data into actionable emerging products. By leveraging high-performance computing and scalable cloud resources, the Product Generation Service supports NOAA’s operational missions, including critical weather forecasting and climate monitoring tasks to enable timely and accurate data delivery.

NCCF Dissemination Service: Timely and accessible data delivery

The NCCF Dissemination Service provides robust and scalable data distribution capabilities to authorized NOAA users, external partners, and the general public. This service facilitates near real-time data access via subscription-based deliveries, user-friendly web portals, and standards-compliant APIs, significantly improving data accessibility for diverse user communities.

NCCF Science Sandbox Service: Accelerating innovation

NCCF’s Science Sandbox Service is a dedicated environment designed to enable researchers and developers to experiment with new algorithms and methodologies. This service supports rapid prototyping, validation, and seamless transition of successful innovations into NOAA’s operational workflows, fostering and accelerating continuous scientific advancement.

Impact: Advancing NOAA’s mission through enhanced data management

The expansion of NCCF, supported by AWS Professional Services and GAMA-1 Technologies, integrates NOAA’s historical enterprise systems into a unified and efficient solution. This consolidation reduces redundancy, lowers operational costs, and streamlines data workflows, ultimately enhancing NOAA’s environmental intelligence capabilities.

NCCF has already demonstrated its effectiveness by onboarding data from NOAA’s latest geostationary satellite, GOES-19, launched in June 2024, including crucial space weather observations. The framework currently manages dozens of data products and is projected to support thousands of additional products over the coming years. This expansion positions NOAA to significantly enhance its responsiveness to environmental events, improve data-driven decision-making, and maintain global leadership in environmental science and stewardship.

Learn more about NOAA on AWS such as the Registry of Open Data, GAMA-1 Technologies, and AWS Professional Services.